


a wound, bleeding

by Wildcard



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Blood, F/M, Gen, Gore, Murder, very minor background FM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 16:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14264892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: Vladimir becomes Blood Lord Vladimir; the backstory behind the Blood Lord and his rise to power.





	a wound, bleeding

_Drip. Tick. Drip. Tock.  
_  
The sound of dripping blood mingles with the ticks of the grandfather clock that watch over the living room. It’s as soothing as a lullaby and regular as a heartbeat but the only heart that still beats in the mansion is Vladimir’s.  
  
He turns slowly, surveying his work with great satisfaction. The desiccated corpses, drained of all their blood, are stacked neatly next to the fireplace. Like logs, they lie stiffly on top of each other, tissue-paper thin skin stretched over brittle bones.   
  
The ceiling rains blood, droplets gathering between the mortar and slowly falling down to soak into the stone. A thought will be all it will take to bring the blood of his kin back to him but for now, it suits Vladimir to play with his new-found power.  
  
So much power. So much blood.  
  
A hefty price? Yes, but worth it.  
  
Even now, he can still taste their blood in the back of his throat and it is  _exquisite_.

 _i._ _Ambria_

The grass is wet with morning dew, damping the soles of Vladimir’s shoes as he approaches his sister. She’s bent over a rose bush, searching through the flowers for the most perfect bloom to adorn her dress. Lately, she’s developed a habit of poking a rose in full bloom into her cleavage though the velvet-soft, wine-dark petals look weak and dull compared to her necklace of blood crystals. She thinks it’s marvelously unique, however, and will hear no critique from her siblings for it.

  
“Ambria,” Vladimir calls out, hands in his pockets as he strolls through the gardens, “Would you like some help?”  
  
“Please,” she says, not even turning around as she speaks. “I need a white rose today. I’m going to pair it with that lovely embroidered dress from Marielle in the village – she’s sewn just the most perfect rosebuds around the hem.”   
  
Vladimir knows the dress in question. The silk material is so precious that Marielle was temporarily moved into the castle to work on it, the family not trusting her to keep the dress clean and undamaged in her hovel of a home. Her coarse hands and fat fingers had worked day and night on the dress, sewing little white knots of rose buds against the deep red fabric.  
  
It’s a beautiful dress and Vladimir almost considers waiting just a little longer. Ambria hasn’t even worn it yet. She’s in her nightgown and an overdress now, clothes that won’t be stained by the dew or dirt, and Ambria has so been looking forwards to it…  
  
No. He’s waited long enough already.  
  
“Here,” he says and offers her a perfect white rosebud. The petals tremble gently, barely opened enough to be flustered by the breeze of being passed over, and when Ambria reaches out her hand for it, Vladimir presses it into her palm with more force than necessary.

She’s not wearing her gloves; a thorn pierces her skin and the scent of blood hits the air like the most delicate of perfumes.   
  
“Oh –” That’s all she has time to say before Vladimir  _attacks_. With one hand, he grabs the necklace of blood crystals around her throat and pulls. The other hand, fingers tipped with silver claws, buries itself in her stomach.  
  
Blood explodes from her wounds, gushing out in frantic rivers. There’s a counter-pull, Ambria trying to frantically draw her blood back into her body, but without her focus stones, she isn’t strong enough. She’s dead within seconds, just a body at Vladimir’s feet with her hands still holding the rose.  
  
Vladimir tilts his head back and lets the spilled blood come to him. It rises in red ribbons, curling and looping as it gathers in the air and waits for his next command.  Vladimir takes a deep breath, gaze fixed on the waiting blood instead of his sister’s corpse.  
  
(If he’s wrong about his theory, if he’s killed Ambria for nothing, her body will be the easiest to dispose of.  
  
If he’s right, disposing of her body won’t be a problem.)  
  
The liquid crawls over his face and then trickles down his throat, slowly at first but then in a rush that would make him choke if he weren’t stripping the power from the blood instead of drinking it. It pours in through his eyes, through his eyes, through his nostrils; he drowns in reverse, standing on his feet in the open air.  
  
Power pulses through him, raw and strong. He can hear his own heartbeat. He can hear the heartbeats of the birds. He can hear – he can hear the heartbeats of his family, steady inside the house, as sure as maps marked ‘here be monsters’.  
  
Vladimir smiles to himself and wraps his sister’s necklace around his wrist. She won’t be needing it anymore and it’s a nice piece of jewelry, after all.   
  
He’ll honor her by wearing it as he kills the rest of his kin.

 _ii._ _Drastia_  
  
Drastia’s at her dressing table, skirts obscuring her carved, three-legged stool from view. Her wealth of white silky hair spills over her shoulders in flawless waves, like moonlight made solid, and she’s humming to herself as she draws a bone comb through her hair.   
  
In the mirror, she sees her brother’s reflection and smiles at him, pink lips made paler by powder fine as crushed sugar.  
  
“You’ve woken early, brother,” she says, pouring a handful of hair over her shoulder and starting to divided it into two sections. “Did sleep not suit you?”  
  
Ambria’s power hums in his veins alongside his own, a minor key to the major theme. He can feel it starting to merge with his own, slow as two oils mixing – and better yet, he can feel Drastia’s power gliding through her. Ambria’s power was that of the slow pulse of sap, the steady rise of tree-blood compared to the oil-black gush of Vladimir’s strength. Drastia’s, still contained within her skin, is as airy and versatile as light.  He can already imagine how it will enervate his abilities, already steadied and supported by Ambri’s power.  
  
“I had the most terrible dreams, sister-dear,” Vladimir says and comes up behind her. He curves his hand as if they’re two halves of a coronet and sets them over Drastia’s head, her hair smooth and cool against his palms. “I dreamt we all died and a black river of blood ran down the front path.”  
  
Her lips, so pale, so perfect, form a pout as she half-turns to look up at Vladimir.   
  
“What a monstrous thought, brother. Pray, put it from your mind,” she counsels him. She lifts one hand and curls it around his left wrist, the tips of her fingers resting right over his veins.  
  
How can she not feel Ambria’s power within Vladimir? How can she be so  _weak_?  
  
“Sweetest sister, do not fret,” Vladimir consoles her as he picks up a pin from her dressing table. “I will think no more of it.”  
  
She turns back to her mirror and smiles.  
  
She’s still smiling when Vladimir stabs the hair pin into the back of her neck and draws the blood out in a near instantaneous motion. The needle goes in and the moment it breaks the skin, blood comes out. It fountains out like a swath of red skill, rising high into the air. It’s a tsunami poised to crash but instead, Vladimir calls it down to him as his sister’s lifeless body topples to his feet.  
  
He watches himself in the mirror as he absorbs Drastia’s power from her blood and this time, he can see his skin paling and his eyes becoming brighter. Ambria’s power and Drastia’s hum unhappily through his veins but second by second, they are being consumed and converted.  
  
His hair is longer now. He runs a hand over his formerly short hair and smiles wryly, picking up the hair pins tipped with blood crystals that Drastia’s had been so proud of. His hair is just long enough for him to clip them into place.  
  
Before he leaves, he props his sister’s withered corpse up on the dressing table stool. The body leans drunkenly forwards, but that’s just as well. Had she still been alive, Drastia would’ve hated to see what she had become.  
  
(But they are all monsters and with every kill, Vladimir looks more like the truth of his soul.)

 _iii._ _Arkady_

Vladimir knocks on the door and when there is no response, he enters without bothering to knock again. Arkady is still abed, one arm sprawled out to the side and tucked under the shoulders of the woman who is fast asleep and curled against his side. This one’s new, but her coarse, sun-reddened skin and flaming red hair mark her as some woman from the village. Nobody important; the blood in Vladimir’s veins does not buzz at her closeness but at Arkady’s.   
  
Should he kill her or let her live? He’s inclined to let the maids live. They’re necessary for his continued comfort at the castle. She is no maid though, simply some slattern whom his brother chose to amuse himself with. Vladimir has no desire to use his brother’s leavings; a lord does not eat from a pig’s trough.  
  
He’s still deciding when Arkady stirs, his eyes opening slowly. Pale eyelashes untangle and eyes the bright, gleaming red of fresh blood focus sleepily on Vladimir.  
  
“Little brother,” Arkady drawls, voice low and sleep-roughed, “What _are_ you wearing in your hair?”  
  
Vladimir has always liked Arkady least of his siblings; he raises one hand and Arkady’s body jerks, back arching as blood gushes out of every orifice in a river that runs to Vladimir. There’s barely any resistance from Arkady – his back snaps and the woman on the bed screams. She’s scrambling out of the bed, bolting naked for the door to the bathroom and Vladimir throws his other arm out wide.  
  
He pulls, fingers crooking, and she comes to a halt. Her body jerks as if she’s run into a wall, then turns with the slow, jerky motions of a marionette. There are tears streaming down her face as she walks back to Vladimir with slow, stumbling steps.  He can feel her resistance, feel her muscles struggling to lock, to stop, and nothing has ever been so exciting in his life.  
  
Vladimir reaches deeper, threading his control through the delicate membranes of her brain. Perhaps if he can control her from there, he can make her walk look more natural.  
  
She falls to her knees before him, hands clasped in front of her sagging breasts, and pleads.  
  
“Please, milord, please – I’ll do anything, I won’t tell no one, please don’t kill me.”  
  
He considers her plea thoughtfully – he could, after all, do with a test subject – but she reeks of fear and his brother’s seed.Disgusting. Whomever he chooses to test his new powers on should be worthy of his attention, not some mere victim of opportunity.  
  
Vladimir crooks his fingers, forcing her to rise. His brother’s blood swirls around them in a spiral of scarlet like a ribbon caught in a tornado. Her wide blue eyes are filled with terror, tears brimming up and spilling over her lashes, and the wet tear tracks down her freckled cheeks make her rough skin shine.  
  
“What’s your name?” He asks, gorging himself on the life essence from his brother’s blood and feeling his heartbeat slow further still.  
  
“Tina, please—” She sobs, unable to even move her hands to cover herself now that Vladimir has control of her body once more.  
  
“Tina,” Vladimir says, as kindly detached as if he were chastising one of the maids for a minor error. “I am sure that you won’t tell anyone.”  
  
For a second, a glimmer of hope comes to those azure eyes as her sobs slow.  
  
“But I would like you to do something for me,” Vladimir continues.  
  
“Anything, milord,” she promises hastily.  Vladimir smiles and steps back.  
  
“Request that I kill you.”   
  
The horror that floods into her eyes is delightful to see. Vladimir enjoys it almost as much as her struggle to fight his command. He doesn’t take control of her mouth, doesn’t force her lips and tongue to form the words that he wants to hear. He snakes his power into her brain instead, commanding her to obey.   
  
“Please—” she says, tears spilling from her cheeks again, “Please, milord-” She chokes and Vladimir watches her with interest, wondering if her heart will give way from the struggle or if his power will win out. “Please -- kill me.”  
  
“Good girl,” Vladimir tells her and curls his fingers into towards his palm, tapping them just once against the heel of his hand.  
  
His brother’s blood forms into a dozen daggers and stab into her from every angle. She drops to the floor, blood rapidly forming a puddle under her, but he does not reach for it. Why should he sup on the inferior essence of her life when there are still so many family members left?  
  
Ambria’s blood is his now and Drastia’s is more than halfway converted. His brother’s power feels weaker than either sister, a fact which makes Vladimir smile as he steps over the woman’s corpse to head to his brother’s dressing table.  
  
The tie pin with the blood crystal stud isn’t Vladimir’s style in the least but it would be a shame not to complete the whole set. He skewers his cravat with it and sets off down the hall.  
  
His parents are waiting.  
  
His _future_ is waiting.


End file.
